Matatu

Matatu is a journal on African literatures and societies dedicated to interdisciplinary dialogue between literary and cultural studies, historiography, the social sciences and cultural anthropology.Matatu is animated by a lively interest in African culture and literature (including the Afro-Caribbean) that moves beyond worn-out clichés of “cultural authenticity” and “national liberation” towards critical exploration of African modernities. The East African public transport vehicle from which Matatu takes its name is both a component and a symbol of these modernities: based on “Western” (these days usually Japanese) technology, it is a vigorously African institution; it is usually regarded with some anxiety by those travelling in it, but is often enough the only means of transport available; it creates temporary communicative communities and provides a transient site for the exchange of news, storytelling, and political debate.Matatu is firmly committed to supporting democratic change in Africa, to providing a forum for interchanges between African and European critical debates, to overcoming notions of absolute cultural, ethnic, or religious alterity, and to promoting transnational discussion on the future of African societies in a wider world.Matatu will be published as journal as of 2016. All back volumes are still available in print.

This collection deals with the dynamics of current developments in literature, language, and culture in Kenya and Tanzania. Topics include, a. o., literary language choice and translation, popular fiction and codeswitching, Swahili hip-hop texts, and HIV/AIDS discourse.

The essays in this volume capture the exciting energy of the emergent novel in East and West Africa, drawing on diffe¬rent theoretical insights to offer fresh and engaging perspectives on what has been variously termed the ‘new wave’, ‘emer¬gent generation’, and ‘third generation’. Subjects...

This second volume of research emanating from Drama for Life, University of the Witwatersrand, explores the transformative and healing qualities of the arts in South Africa, Botswana, Cameroon, Kenya, Rwanda, and Zimbabwe. Essays on arts for social change illuminate the difficulties of conflict...

Drama for Life, University of the Witwatersrand, aims “to enhance the capacity of young people, theatre practitioners and their communities to take responsibility for the quality of their lives in the context of HIV and AIDS in Africa. We achieve this through participatory and experiential drama...

This is the third collection produced by members of a six-year research project, funded by the NUFU (Norwegian Programme for Development, Research, and Education), whose concern was to find, preserve, and analyse ‘orature’ – spoken forms of all kinds, both their unique qualities and their...

Besides searching book reviews, an interview with the writer Tijan M. Sallah, a full report on the 6th Ethiopian International Film Festival, and a stimulating selection of creative writing (including a showcase of recent South African poetry), this issue of Matatu offers general essays on...

This issue of Matatu offers cutting-edge studies of contemporary Nigerian literature, a selection of short fiction and poetry, and a range of essays on various themes of political, artistic, socio-linguistic, and sociological interest. Contributions on theatre focus on the fool as dramatic...

The coverage displayed here is predominantly on sub-Saharan literary production, and with a – perhaps systemic – focus on important aspects of political history and socio-political structures (including marxian analyses of the ‘public sphere’) and such crucial arenas as religious discipline, the...

Twenty years after the fall of apartheid, South Africa is still struggling with its traumatic past. In this interdisciplinary collection of interviews, prominent South African novelists, psychologists, and academics reflect on the issues of trauma, memory, and narrative....